Management thinker Peter Drucker said it best, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” You can’t know if you are successful unless success is defined and tracked. By measuring performance, you track the information necessary to better understand what must improve to meet your goals. As 2017 winds to an end and you begin to focus on your growth strategy for the upcoming year, define what success looks like and establish a metric in which you can quantify your progress.
Developing a performance measurement system will help you to stay on top of your organization’s goals and better understand the current state of your business. Rather than a stagnant business plan, a performance measurement system allows you to periodically see what strides you are making towards your annual goals and allows you to tweak your strategy accordingly.
Here are a few recommend tactics for implementing a performance measurement system in your organization:
Develop Key Performance Indicators for everyone at your company
Everyone in your organization plays a role in your company’s success, therefore each individual should have quantifiable expectations or measures that define success. Key Performance Indicators are measurable values that determine how effectively an employee is achieving their key business objectives in a specific timeframe. Your KPIs should be the actions that create the results you desire. Some examples could include: the number of monthly sales appointments set, percentage of overdue project tasks, or number of outbound calls handled per representative. If you want to change your current results, you need to change the actions you make every day or every week.
Follow the Green-Yellow-Red success criteria
The Green-Yellow-Red success criteria should describe and drive results when tracking progress. Green means you are on track to meeting your goal. Yellow means you are a little behind on your goal and need to reevaluate what actions are needed to get back on track, identifying specific actions you will take to make it Green. Red means you will not reach your goal and will need to identify a new solution or a new timeframe. The Green-Yellow-Red success criteria should be set as a team during your annual planning and quarterly planning sessions – there should be no surprises and everyone should have input and agree on the criteria. KPIs should be watched and reviewed on a daily or weekly basis depending on the KPI and its impact.
Clarifying expectations, defining success, measuring, analyzing and adjusting are the right steps towards creating a winning process. With the new year rapidly approaching, now is the time to set your annual goals and define the numbers and actions needed to achieve the results you are after. If you need help developing your annual goals, defining your key performance indicators, or implementing the Green-Yellow-Red success criteria within your organization, CONTACT ME TODAY.